Remote Controlled Families

Yesterday, I started watching the Simpsons in French on TV. The Simpsons in French is every bit as good as the Simpsons in English. Maybe even better.

The dubbing is Quebecois.

Then I realized I must have the Simpsons on dvd as my son left his stash here before he went to Europe.

Sure enough, I found the boxed sets, under the book shelf, and I grabbed the one on top.

 I started watching the first disc of the set, which includes my favorite episode, the one where Homer grows hair. (I just love the executive bathroom.)

The second season from, yikes, 1990! and that season has many of my favorite episodes.  Hmm. Produced twenty one years ago. Now, how can that be?

So this Language  exercise has turned into an anthropological study of ‘ American cultural history.’

Funny, right now I am watching the episode where Marge takes on Itchy and Scratchy violence.

Ironically, back then in the early nineties there were many Moms in my area who banned the Simpsons for the violence in it – or for the irreverence. Or for both.

I was not such a parent.

I recall one family in the era belonged to a fundamentalist Christian sect and they banned the TV entirely. My sons told me that the kids in that family had radio so they listened to the Simpsons’ dialogue via radio.

That’s what happens when you ban stuff.

All to say, Time Flies.

I have no problem understanding anything in the Simpsons, French, which means I probably am not improving anything by listening.

But I am having fun. Because it’s a good show, even 20 years later.

Although the Simpsons are green here. Must be my ancient Blue Ray machine. And I can’t keep the subtitles from showing up. So I have the translation, even though I don’t need it.

The other day a friend was telling me how her daughter was having problems with her teenage kids. I told her I did not feel qualified to pass on words of wisdom, despite having endured such difficult times myself. Why? Because SO MUCH HAS CHANGED with respect to family life in ten years.

Well, with respect to the new technologies which control us all. The Nintendo machine drove me batty, back then, but I didn’t have kids texting all day in front of me.

And I used to write essays about the impact of new technologies on family life. No kidding.  But I’m a virtual dinosaur now. I should have suggested the frazzled Mom in question watch some past episodes of the Simpsons on DVD for advice on how to raise a family.

Some wisdom is eternal. Even some cartoon wisdom.

Funny, in this same episode Michelangelo’s David comes to Springfield and some mothers complain that it is an abomination. Marge, who  wants the Itchy and Scratch cartoon censored, feels that everybody should see the statue as it is ‘art’.

Outrageous satire? Exaggerating to prove a point? Not really.

In 1966 in Pointe Claire Quebec, the new shopping center there, Fairview, contained a replica of Michelangelo’s David. Mothers complained. The statue was moved to the new library at Loyola (now Concordia) where, in 1972, if I wanted, I could grab a front row seat and study right in groin view, except that some pranksters had painted the David’s genitalia green.

In my follow up to Threshold Girl (www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

that I am calling Diary of a Confirmed Spinster, Militant Suffragette Sympathizer and Inadvertent Opium Addict, I have Edith Nicholson visit an art exhibit in Phillip’s Square while in a drug stupour (on the day after King Edward VII’s death, and a week after her fiance’s death in Cornwall fire.

She comes face to face with the painting Maternity, by Helen Riter Hamilton. And faints.

White Wedding Dresses?

Here’s the ‘iconic’ pic from my website TIGHSOLAS, www.tighsolas.ca that contains the Nicholson family letters from the 1910 era. It is a detail of a ‘tea party’ on the grass in front of their comfortable brick-encased Queen Anne style home in Richmond, Quebec.
I like the picture because it is pretty, but it really does embody the hopes and dreams of the middle class in Canada in 1910.

I watched the show Sunday Morning, yesterday, taped and the comedic editorialist (I don’t know her name) talked about her upcoming marriage and the high cost of weddings and wedding gowns. She setttled on a off white number, floor model.

She mentioned that white wedding dresses didn’t originally signify purity; that Queen Victoria got married in white to promote the lace industry in her country

I suspect white came to signify purity around 1910, as we had the Purity Movement, which I have written about extensively on this blog.

The comedienne also mentioned that white was worn by some women because white cloth was more expensive, and hard to wear (stains) and hard to wash, hence wearing it was a sign of prosperity. Bingo!

That’s what these white dresses meant to the Nicholson Women, who did their own clothes washing most of the time, despite aspring to a genteen lifestyle. In 1911, it takes Flora Nicholson, 19, TWO days to wash and iron her white dresses on a weekend she returns from Macdonald Teaching College.

So this all underscores the points I want to make with my ebook Threshold Girl, about Flora at School in 1911/12 and based on the Nicholson letters.

Threshold Girl is about a lot of things pertaining to Laurier Era History, but it’s mostly about women and clothes and what these clothes mean to them and what their clothes lust means to other less fortunate working women in the textile trade.

http://www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

The picture above is deceptive. It is of Marion Nicholson, my husband’s grandmother, who went on to lead the Teachers’ Union in Montreal. She was no slacker: she had tonnes of energy and directed it in many useful ways. I will write about her later, in another book, which will deal with the Jewish question in Montreal schools.. Edith Nicholson, the subject of my next novellette was more of a dreamer, although she could could be a woman of action, if necessary. I’m turning her into an opium addict for in my next book, The Diary of a Confirmed Spinster.

A Story Censored… But I’m Gonna Tell It.

Westmount Methodist Teacher 1910

Edith in her school teacher uniform

 

Well, it’s coming to me, the plot of Edith’s Story, about Edith Nicholson’s life and work in 1910, in Westmount Quebec. A sequel to Threshold Girl www.tighsolas.ca/page10.pdf.pdf

 

Edith, a militant suffragette sympathizer, if not ‘activist’ as there were no activists in Canada, will learn from Carrie Derick about the murky side of the suffrage movement, its relationship with eugenics.

 

And as Edith teaches at a missionary school,one  that converts French Canadian Catholics to Methodism, she will be able to see the ‘illogic’ of it all… even if Carrie Derick, esteemed social activist and scientist, does not.

 

In real life, Edith stepped out with Derick at McGill. According to at least one scholarly paper, many people at McGill turn of the last century, supported eugenics. But then the President of the US did.

 

I’ll have Edith argue with Marion about IQ.. a new test in 1910, invented by a French man to help even the playing field socially speaking, but then usurped by elitists and racists and brought to North America.

 

Kids these days!

Main Street Richmond, Quebec. Google Earth.

View to the Village of Richmond, from the house that once was called Tighsolas.

Hmm. As I mentioned, the 1910 issue of the Richmond Times Guardian featured few articles, but two were extremely interesting to me, as I write Flo in the City, about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/.

One was about the young men, who were making ‘goo goo eyes’ at the girls all over town- and even at church. Well, of course, church was a good enough place as any to go ‘a courtin’ and I mention that in my first chapter of Flo in the City.

Indeed, with the advent of the motion picture, the church lost that appeal.

Goo goo eyes must have been the local expression
for Norman Nicholson uses the phrase in a letter.

Well, if the men of Richmond were throwing themselves shamelessly at the girls of Richmond, this was lost on the girls. Another tongue in cheek article in the same paper claims that men are extraordinarly picky when it comes to women.

In a story entitled What A Man Wants: He wants a woman ‘with a head stored with all the intellectual wisdom of the ages, but she must never get the idea that hubby hasn’t the superior intellect and doesn’t know everything.

She must dress in the latest fashion but must never spend any money in so doing.

She must be interesting, elusive, gay, of a deep religious nature, lively, modest, retiring, self sacrificing, brilliant, fascinating, a lover of home and fireside, prefering the society of her husband to anything…”

Gee, there’s a contradiction here.

Still, this is a repeating theme in my novel, how women’s love of fashion is held against them. See the recent blog about Professor MacPhail of McGill, who had contempt for women’s perceived vanity it seems. He wanted a wife just like dear old mom, I guess.

Funny, I just saw a March of Time (Turner Classic Movies) from the immediate post WWII era that applauded women’s obsesssion with beauty big time. Spending millions and millions on wanting to look good (for Dad returning from war) was a good and patriotic thing. This was one weird March of Time.

Ahh. Consumerism….

Who am I?

Marion Nicholson in 1912.

I used to have a recurring dream: I am walking downtown in barefeet and it does not feel nice or comfortable. It feels embarrassing or dangerous. I am often seeking a pair of shoes to wear and I can never find them or I don’t have the money to buy what I find…… I think these were anxiety dreams about finances, but also much more.

Pretty easy to deconstruct, this dream. Shoes are identity and I didn’t feel I had one. I still don’t to some degree, although I can’t remember the last time I had that dream (before I had a family)so that must mean something.

Today, I have only a few pairs of shoes at one time. This, apparently, is not the norm among women. Many women I know have a wardrobe filled with shoes. I suspect that the urge to have so many shoes is similar to my barefoot dream: a search for identity.

I write this because I just read the Introduction of Nan Enstad’s book Ladies of Labour: Girls of Adventure, about working class (mostly Italian and Jewish) girls at the turn of the century.

Virtually every paragraph has significance for my book in progress Flo in the City, about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/

Enstad tells of how these working class girls (working mostly in the textile industry) turned hierarchy on its head by refusing to wear sensible shoes and by dressing and acting above their station.

She discusses consumerism and feminism (my favourite subject) and suggests that the REALITY of women’s lives isn’t quite what the theorists suggest.

If being a passive consumer often entrenches the heirarchy in place (see the Ivory Soap ads on www.tighsolas.ca/page460.html.) these working class women often used ‘products’ to define their identities in their own way, sometimes to give themselves genuine power and sometimes to give themselves the illusion of power (fantasy).

Enstad even talks about the importance of hats to era women: she describes how a union leader makes a demand for hat racks for her workers. Why such a trivial demand? So the women’s hats won’t get trummeled. “They cost maybe only 50 cents, ” the union leader says, “but we value our hats too.” (Rough quote.) Remember, Edith and Marion paid 7.00 for their hats in 1909. (Enstad also mentions the movie The New York Hat.)

This is a kind of eureka moment for me because I tend to do the same thing.

Aside: You know the Toronto International Film Festival is happening now, and it’s all over the television, and, as much as I like film, it’s a party I am not invited to, (although nothing stops me from going to TO and buying a ticket to a film I would like to see, but I’d rather go to The Shaw Festival (and wine country.) Enstad talks about the dimestore novels that put ideas in working class women’s heads, or led them to fantasize about a ‘better’ life. Well, our cult of celebrity does the same thing. (Oh, Robert Redford’s movie, the Conspirator, seems interesting. Apparently the screenwriter conducted 15 years of research. I can respect that.)

A few years ago, when I stumbled upon a trunk full of letters written by my husband’s Isle of Lewis ancestors, I couldn’t help but read them..and I have spent the past 7 years researching background to them, posting a website about them, and writing this book (sic).

Why? Most people would have read a few letters, dismissed them as trivial women’s stuff, and perhaps consigned them to the recycle bin.

I recall showing these letters to a friend who told me “They sound so old fashioned.” But I was intrigued: the letters sounded very modern to me.

I think I understood, subconsciously,what Enstad is writing about. That Identity was being constructed in these letters: Canadian identity, female identity, middle class identity. So of course I related BIG TIME.

(Another aside: Yesterday, on the News, Hockey: A Musical was being reported on. The entertainment reporter said this movie featured a number of Canadian actors, Olivia Newton John…” Well, my husband was freaked when I yelled out at the TV “She’s not Canadian!!” (The reported corrected herself.) Why does this bother me, that a silly sounding l (likely crap) Canadian film puts a foreigner in a starring role and then describes the film as archetypally Canadian? Why does infotainment blather, in general, bother me, so much? OK. Now back to regular programming.)

That’s MY identity (despite the fact I never wore a shirtwaist and despite the fact I had no sisters and my mother was not at all like Margaret Nicholson being French Canadian and from a wealthy family.)

But no wonder I married my husband, the great grand child of Norman and Margaret Nicholson and the grandson of Marion Nicholson Blair, one time head of the Montreal Protestant Teachers’ Union, who fought for higher salaries and pensions for teachers, but died before earning a pension herself. (Marion was not a dreamer, she ACTED on the world like a MAN: Edith (like me) was half dreamer, half actor and Flora was a dreamer, the artist…. Hmmm. Three different degrees of femaleness.)

Ironically, my mother-in-law often spoke of Marion, her mom, but I never listened much. I recall my MIL telling me her ancestors were poor Highlanders (she was sitting at her 50′s style melamine kitchen table puffing on a cigarette) and I wasn’t quite sure what that meant.

Yet, a few months after I met my husband, for some reason, he drove me down to the Eastern Townships to look at Tighsolas, then out of family hands.

The house was dilapidated and had no porch. (I was not impressed, but I was in love.)New owners have since restored the house’s dignity. It is lovely now and my husband and I have driven by a few times since 1985. Well, my mother in law in now buried there in the Cemetery there, up on the hill. With the Popes and Ewings and Dr. Henry Watters of Flo in the City. . And I likely will be there one day too.

A Fashion Iconoclast 1905???

No, I’m not talking about Coco Chanel, the most famous couturier of all time, not this time. I’m talking about an unknown girl captured on film in say 1905.

I decided last night to go back to YouTube to see if any new films of the 1900 era have been posted.

And yes, a person can spend a long time living in the past on YouTube. (Unfortunately, no films of Montreal.)

Someone even posted a longer, 9 minute version, of Edison’s films of the Paris Exposition.

You know what I do: I hook my laptop into the big screen TV. It’s like being there.

This girl caught my eye. She’s filmed at a garden party, supposedly circa 1900, but the hat fashions suggest later, possibly 1910.

But this pretty girl, carrying a younger girl is wearing her flowers UNDER the rim of her bonnet. As far as I can see, she is the only girl doing this at the party. All the hats on the older women are typical of the fashion of the time, with piles of flowers on top. And the girls seem to be wearing mosty unadorned bonnets. (There were fashion rules being followed here. It was a upper crust party.)

And this girl stands out because, I think, she is breaking the rules. And her style is much much prettier than the standard style. Let’s face it, piling flowers on the head looked stupid. (Yes, Marion did the same, I have the pictures which you can see elsewhere on the blog.)

Coco Chanel thought so. She began creating smaller, more elegant hats for her boyfriends’ (name Boy) entourage right around this time.

And so did this girl, who did not go on to become a fashion icon (or maybe she did). But her image lives on on YouTube.

It takes confidence to break the rules of fashion – and few do.

It is more likely that people follow whatever the mode and do it slavishly, even if it is a ridiculous and aesthically dubious fashion.. Some fashions are flattering, some ridiculous. Bell bottoms anyone?

If you read my story about Margaret’s big hat you can what happens when fashions meant for the young are worn by the older women. I published it for an education magazine. www.tighsolas.ca/page476.html

Material Girls

One obstacle I face while writing Flo in the City, my novel about a girl coming of age in the 1910 era based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/, is that I know nothing about sewing. Or fashion. I am not a material girl.

And the Nicholson women did know a lot and they wrote about it in their letters. They were material girls.

But, luckily, the Eaton’s catalogue, now online, is a wonderful resource: I have started with the 1904 Spring and Summer catalogue.

Did you know?
“That the fashions for 1904 will be characterized by many pretty fabrics and handsome novelties in several weaves. A noticeable change in style leans toward the quieter tones and shadings,and yet possessing to a marked degree an improvement in elegance and richness of effect. The leading fabrics for receptions and evening gowns are silk and wool, plain and fancy eoliennes and crepes de chine, wool voiles and etamines. In medium weight materials for dresses and shirtwaist suits, Brilliantines, cord de Chine and fancy mohairs are some of the most popular and durable weaves. For tailored gowns and costumes, the preference is given to broadclothes, coverts, fancy tweed novelties, and canvas suitings in many new and stylish weaves. In the silk department are many new French, Swiss and American novelties. Some of the leading plain weaves are Mousseline, taffetas, Messaline, Louisenne, Peau de soie, Merve and Japanese wash silks. The wash goods section is complete in a variety of latest productions from foreign and domestic markets also containing organdies, muslins, ginghams, zephyrs, etc.”

The various materials are also defined for the newbie (and for me!). Nice copywriting, too. (I wonder if the writer was a woman.)Eaton’s started out the century with a bang and went out with a whimper.

Eaton’s was just too classy to compete in the 1980′s. Eaton’s was all about good quality service and they had a terrific return policy. Honesty, integrity, and such. No major company cares about this nowadays. It’s all about the bottom line. “Whatever is good for business is ‘good’ and that means endless telephone menus, and minions with first names only staffing customer dis-service and no one in charge accountable. It’s all about cheating (within carefully established legal limits) and confusing the customer and putting the onus on the customer to make sure he or she isn’t being cheated.

My son realized he was being overcharged each month on his bank account, by about 10 dollars for about 6 months. He went to the counter to ask for a refund and was told that they could only be refunded 3 months overcharge as that’s how long the bank keeps records. (Yea, tell that to Revenue Canada). He complained and a teller adjacent walked over and said “It’s up to you to watch your statements.” He replied, “I pay you to take care of my money.” Anyway, a senior clerk was called in and he just initialed something and all went well. But it is just typical. My son is only a student, so not an important customer. These days it’s up to you to fight for what is right.. and that takes energy…and the corporations know it. (Enough ranting.)

(Eaton’s, by the way, famously got smeared in Quebec, by the separatists, who claimed their salespeople spoke in English. They became a symbol for prior English domination.) (One of the classic Canadian stories is called The Hockey Sweater and is about a small town French Canadian Mom ordering the wrong hockey sweater from the Eaton’s catalogue.)

And yet they had the first catalogue and were well placed to enter the Internet Age. But they were not nimble enough or the timing was wrong.

Coco Chanel, in 1910, was the right person in the right place at the right time. Eaton’s in the 1990′s was the wrong company in the wrong place in the right time, or something.

So materials in 1910 in Canada came from all around the world, too.

Anyway, I can use the info in the catalogue to ‘flesh out’ Flo in the City… and details are everything.

Perusing this catalogue, on my Kindle, as I waited in Charles de Gaulle Airport, I found another section extremely interesting. The book section. It was an education just to read the volumes listed. And I would dearly love to get hold of some of the books sold in that catalogue, especially one about sexuality and young women. I think it was called the Physical Health of Young Women. Amazon won’t have it but Abebooks might… and then there’s always archive.org.

History Repeats Itself -Clothing

Summer Suits 1905 Eaton’s Catalogue

I started out this morning wanting to write a blog on the Nicholson camera. The house account says that they purchased a Kodak for 5.00 in 1904. Thanks to the web, I can see what Kodak cameras were available then. a 5.00 camera would have been the very cheapest. Which means they either purchased a camera second hand or they got the least expensive camera available.

Which is why the average Canadian family does not have snapshots from 1910. Cameras were luxuries. Further proving this, the 1904 Eaton’s catalogue doesn’t carry cameras.

So I merely flipped through the pages of the catalogue on archive.org and then downloaded a Kindle version to amuse me on a trip I taking on Friday to Greece.

A statement from the Nan Enstad paper I downloaded last night haunted me. She wrote that the women working in the textile factories in the US in 1900 were well aware that the clothes they were making were more important than they were. (After all, they worked in horrible conditions, for little money.)

This Eaton’s catalogue is full of clothing made by women in the textile industry, I assume in Canada. According to another paper I found, on the Canadian textile industry, 7,500 people worked in the industry in Ontario, and 9,000 in Montreal. 80 percent were women, all working in the lower jobs. Bossed around big time by men. Or treated more benignly like ‘little sisters’.

Some women worked from home, at piece work, others in the factories.

The Nicholson women, no doubt, flipped through this very catalogue (they did buy things from Eaton’s, I have the bills) and dreamed about being able to buy more of these glorious things Things THINGS it showcased. (After all, that’s what I did as a child, when I looked at catalogues. I practically salivated over the toy section.)

(Actually, I wouldn’t be surprised if they thought these clothes low-brow and that they desired the fantasy outfits in the Delineator or Harper’s Bazar. When they purchased a women’s suit in the 1908-1913 era, they paid around 12.00 and the suits in this catalogue cost between 8 and 15, so Eaton’s was in their price-range.)

Were the politically-aware Nicholson women aware of the connection between the women’s rights movement, city poverty, and the clothes they lusted after.

To some extent certainly. I have some of their clippings. One clipping “Away from Nature” is about how factory work hurts people, especially young girls. I have another clipping: A letter to the Editor in answer to another letter complaining about women’s expensive clothes habit. The writer says, men only look at women who are dressed up, so women have no choice in the matter. And if women could work at good jobs, the could afford to buy their own clothing.

Yes, they were aware, up to a point. (I mean the city slums scared them silly and the suffrage movement’s raison d’etre was to decrease poverty in the cities.) They also sent out some sewing to a local woman who, no doubt, was not living in their elegant neighbourhood in Richmond, Quebec. There were class distinctions in Richmond, too.

The Nicholson women were aware of the social and political repercussions of their clothes-lust in much the same way I am. I sit here typing, wearing a top that I bought in a store in Burlington, Vermont a few weeks ago. I think it cost 3.00. Probably made in Mexico or Vietnam or… I know this cheap item comes with other costs, to humanity – and the environment. I know that history repeats itself.

But it’s all so complex.

Stitching Together another Nicholson ‘Story’

An 1885 White Peerless sewing machine, very likely the kind Margaret Nicholson used. How do I know? It’s not mentioned in the letters, the brand of the machine. (Although there’s plenty of mention of sewing dresses and shirtwaists and the house accounts reveal few (maybe one)dresses were purchased from 1888 to 1920.)

I know because I put two and two together. I found a promotional brochure for White Sewing machines, that had the music for some patriotic American songs. And I know because yesterday I noticed something in the ‘store’ books that I had previously overlooked.

The Nicholsons bought a sewing machine in 1885 for 30.00. That’s a lot of money. And with this, I learned something else, that Margaret probably learned how to sew on machine as a young mother, out of necessity.

In the early years a dress is purchased for Marion. And there are payments to a seamstress. So this woman, who probably learned baking at her mother’s elbow, learned a new skill, with a new machine.

A new technology made her life easier and cheaper. Or gave her even more work to do And since she had 3 daughters, with the help of this machine, she was able to satisfy their instinct for adornment without breaking the bank. And this happened in parallel with the birth of the clothing industry which gave poorer women work and also helped spur the union movement as their working conditions were, for the most part, appalling. The items in the Eaton’s catalogues tell that story.

There are no sewing machines in the 1889 Eaton’s catalogue, but there are some in the 1906 Sears Catalogue.

From that moment on, most big purchases for clothes made by the Nicholsons were for men’s and boys suits. Yes, the Nicholsons spent a whole lot more on Herb, as a child, than on the girls. I saw a 10,00 entry for “Herb’s bank account” when that boy was but two.

Like most family, they put their dreams and aspirations on the shoulders of the only boy. They spoiled him, I imagine. He must have been quite a disappointment (to say the least) although, apparently, they never mentioned it.

Luckily, the Nicholsons were feminists, even Norman, (remember, they bought Flora a book at 2 years old) and they brought up strong women, who weren’t spoiled. And this prepared the girls for the tough life ahead, the wars and the Depression, and Marion’s early widowhood.

I’m thinking out loud here, but this theme is central to Flo in the City, my book about a girl coming of age in 1910.

In fact, on my website, http://www.tighsolas.ca/ I write “A woman’s love of clothing affects her in more ways than the obvious one.” It’s so true. Clothing is very much a political issue: indeed the Nicholsons knew it: they clipped a letter to the Editor from 1913 where someone is replying to another letter than complains about women’s expensive clothes habit. When it comes to fashion women are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

And so it goes, the last ‘fabric’ stores have now closed in Montreal. Marshall’s was the most famous, on St. Catherine. Beauclair and what’s that other one, Fabricville. I used to write ads fo them. They may still have a store. When you can buy cheap cheap clothing, (on the back of Third World labour) who needs to sew? My mother was brought up rich and was well-educated in Greek and Latin, but couldn’t sew. If she had been able to, it might have made my childhood easier. I was very tall, and no store clothes fit me growing up, and, besides, we had no money for clothes for me.

And yet I didn’t help myself in Home Ec, in high school, I deliberately failed sewing. (Home Ec, I have learned, was a left over of the Home Economics movement of 1910. So all things are connected.)

Today, as it happens, I stumbled upon a paper about this very thing: it appears a Nan Enstad at the University of North Carolina at Greensboro was covering this territory in 1999. Her paper is Dressed for Adventure: Working women and silent movie serials in 1910 (on Jstor) and this paper:Fashioning Political Identities: Cultural Studies and the Historical Construction of Political Subjects from a book Ladies of Labour..working women, popular culture and labour politics in turn of the century America. Change America to Canada and you have the essence of TIGHSOLAS.
…So now I have more reading….

Pygmalion and Tighsolas

Page of Pygmalion, Everybody’s Magazine, 1914.. (I got it off Wikipedia, where it says it is in the public domain.)

Well, I downloaded the first 39 installments of my first draft of Flo in the City and it’s 84 pages long in 11 font. Long. It’s hard to edit your own work and if I spend too long on the computer my eyes get tired, so I know I have to stop using the computer for a few days before I get down to a real good edit of what I have.

So, eyes tired out, I watched Pygmalion last night on Turner Classic Movies, possibly for the first time. I don’t generally like Leslie Howard as an actor, but he’s terrific here and Wendy Hiller even better. (I know of Wendy Hiller, but likely have only seen her as an older actress.) This play is all about acting, isn’t it, on one level?

How can I tie Pygmalion into a blog about Flo in the City, my novel in progress about a girl coming of age in the tumultuous 1910 era, based on the letters of http://www.tighsolas.ca/. Well, in many many ways.

First, it was first produced in 1913, although the movie looks thirties-ish. And it’s all about social classes. “Middle class morality.” The way that Henry Higgins treats Eliza’s hat, says it all. (And hats meant more in 1913 than in the 30′s, so the movie lost something by taking the time period forward a bit.)

I know the Nicholsons liked George Bernard Shaw. I have a playbill from 1931, for the Apple Cart. According to the Montreal Gazette, when the play came to Montreal on February 16, The Apple Cart was considered Shaw’s most discussed play.

Funny, today that play doesn’t make the list of Shaw’s most popular. Pygmalion, in large part thanks to My Fair Lady, is unquestionably his most popular play. Man and Superman, Saint Joan, Major Barbara are the Shaw plays people like and respect today.

Anyway, as I said, I’m going off the computer and picking up my hard copy of Flo in the City: rough draft 1, that is on this blog. When I fix it up, I will make the changes directly on the page, so First Draft One will disappear into the ether.

I have a pretty strong sense of where I am going now: 3 books that cover the 1908-1913 period, with Flo considering a different career path in each book, while the Nicholson’s saga (real life, as it happened) unfolds.

In Canada, accents weren’t the issue in 1910, or as much the issue. I have a tape of Edith and Flora and they sound like me. So if accents weren’t such a giveaway, the way a woman dressed became more important, with respect to a first impression.

Well-defined class distinctions existed of course. That’s what Flo in the City is all about. They do today, although we don’t like to think about it.

Studies reveal that there is LESS mobility between the classes, today, in America and the U.K. than there was a few decades ago.

The Pendulum swings.